“Hot Water is Cool”
2025

“Hot water is an acquired taste. It is brutal, colorless and fickle. Its clarity reveals every floating particle and magnifies every vessel’s blemish. Temperature – boiling hot 開水, hot 熱水, or lukewarm 溫水 – is only revealed when lips touch liquid. The aftertaste of hot water carries the stubborn stain of origin: plumbing infrastructure, energy supply network, and even the heating method and equipment. At my local diner, hot water tastes like coffee, an indicator that it was dispensed from the coffee machine. Yet, in contrast to that stubborn situatedness, the coveted warmth of hot water is fleeting: it dissipates in a matter of minutes and is not so easily regained...”


Essay by COCO C.T. TIN
Photography by BRIAN KANAGAKI
Prop direction by LULU YAO GIOIELLO

FAR - NEAR, Volume 6: Heat